High performance and high strength fiber reinforced composite materials are predominantly processed by means of a vacuum bag method for fabricating various lightweight structural components therefrom, for example composite structural shell components for use in the manufacture of aircraft fuselages. With such a vacuum bag fabrication method, considerable quality risks arise, especially in connection with the fabrication of integrally stiffened structures such as fuselage shell structures, due to the manual positioning of the individual structural elements and the manual application of a vacuum skin as well as the manual sealing thereof. Each manual step in the process suffers a significant risk of inaccurate or inconsistent positioning and arranging of the several elements. That results in an increased reject rate, reduced strength, and/or increased tolerance variations of the finished structural components. An automated fabrication of structural components using such a vacuum bag technique is not possible.